The Tragedy Within the Comedy: The Politics of Narrativizing Émigré Crisis in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin

Abstract

This research aims to examine the novel Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov in the light of Gilles Deleuze and Filix Guattari’s concept of Minor Literature. This research is a qualitative study of the protagonist Timofey Pnin, an émigré, who demonstrates all the three characteristics of minority literature i.e. “deterritorialization of language”, “connection of the individual to political immediacy” and “collective assemblage of enunciation” (18) as delineated by Deleuze and Guattari in their work Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature. The importance of this research lies in the fact that it highlights the politicization of the omniscient narrative voice that draws attention to itself, attempting, albeit transparently, to manipulate the understanding of the reader about the other characters in the novel in general and of Pnin in particular. The narrative of the novel, therefore, merits a closer analysis to perceive the émigré crisis couched in the novel’s comic episodes associated with the life and personality of Pnin.